September 20, 2008

McCain's Health Care "Solution"

From Paul Krugman's blog at the NYTimes. This is what the formerly honorable John McCain had to say about health care only last September:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Or as Krugman notes:

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Josh Marshall notes:

Remember, [McCain's] top economics advisor is former Sen. Phil Gramm, the legislative architect of the banking and financial services deregulation that led to the current crisis. And his health care proposals are all off-the-rack Heritage Foundation-style initiatives based on the premise that people have too much, not too little insurance. The only thing jarring about the statement is the degree to which it has been overtaken by events as McCain now tries -- a la Palin the Earmark-Killer -- to rebrand himself as a Mr. Wall Street oversight and transparency when he's been pushing deregulation for 25 years.

14 comments:

John K: Remember it was Ted Kennedy, and I am not sure if he was drunk or sober when he pushed this thru, demanded all health care go to HMO's. We used to have private doctors in this country, but thanks to Kennedy they all belong to regulated HMO's. I'll take McCain's decisions over a librals anyday.

There's actually more to this story in the sense of how the health insurance industry works. When you insure groups, like a company's workers, you spread the risk and cost of a catastrophic illness over a large group. It helps that they are a group of adults in good enough shape to work. So the costs of insuring them can be much less than if you insured each individual individually. But what McCain is proposing is to remove the tax exempt status of employer based health insurance, and give the employee a refundable tax credit. Employer's might well stop offering health insurance, as there will be less benefit to them (in that their contribution to the employee will be taxable now). Working men and women will be forced out of group insurance, with it's pools of shared risk and cost, and they will deal with insurance companies entirely on their own. This could drive up the cost of health care coverage dramatically.

Of course, if McCain is elected, Congress will not pass this silliness. Instead we will get no health care plan, and we will watch our costs continue to rise beyond our control.

Please stop feeding the troll known as John K. Just ignore the him and is illogical idiotic rants. The guy is too pathetic to write his own blog and instead lurks around on this one hoping someone will give him the time of day.

I find the basic idea of the comparison rather insightful. I have had this discussion with health care providers and stand by my assertion; the health care industry is over regulated. The comparison amuses me in that in both cases the assumed suggestion is to increase regulation which strangles both industries. It seems almost self abusive to regulate any industry to it's knees then claim we must come to it's aid with further regulation.

My knowledge of the financial industry is scant, but it seems that seeking to regulate further small transactions like naked shorts is almost silly when we ignore the obvious problems created by too much credit at multiple levels of our economy. Once again we fall into the trap of bailing out the big guys, who should know better, and scolding the little guys. Who are we hurting? Certainly not the CEO's who walk away with their salaries intact; we hurt the average stock holder, the petit capitalist trying to save a buck for the future against today's wild inflation.

John K: Only in the mind of Heath is it BS. Check with the facts Homer and you will clearly see who pushed thru HMO's causing the medical insurance mess we are in now. Kennedy did that while he was drunk. Or is the drunk Kennedy thing BS also. LOL LOL LOL

So there are no private doctors in the United States? None since 1973?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/nyregion/21vaccine.html

Doctors think medicine is over regulated? Big surprise, but try asking a patient. Doctors who live in Upper Saint Clair and drive Mercedes will not see patients who live in Bloomfied or Lincoln Larimer, unless those patients have health insurance.

And as for feed John K., surely the truth is worth feeding a troll over.

John K: Doctors are now tied to HMO's. They push the patient in and get them out. They run any type of test they can think of to avoid a lawsuit. So no, there are no private doctors left because they can't make any money. All thanks to a drunken Kennedy. And it could have been worse. If Hillary Care had won out in 1993 the mess would have been compounded. Every hypochondriac with a liberal mindset would be clogging the system and preventing people with real problems from getting thru. Liberals...sheesh.

I don't know - I'm guessing if we can afford to give the financial geniuses on Wall Street a blank check for a trillion dollars, we can probably afford universal health care, expand education and provide Americans with the kind of country they deserve. Unfortunately, Republicans have made it abundantly clear who's first in line - the wealthy, who need the middle class to bail them out of the mess they've created(only the middle class gets to assume all of the risk and receives nothing for it).

On a side note, it should be pointed out that it was Richard M. Nixon who signed into law the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. And a man named Paul Ellwood had a lot more do to with it than Ted Kennedy.

John K: What the left has never defined is affordable health care. You think thru paycheck withdrawals we get full access to every doctor and every procedure? Affordable has never been defined by the left.

John K: Limbaugh defined affordable according to the liberals. Affordable means giving health care to any liberal that wants it under the guise that they will pay eventually and if they do not then the rich will be taxed to pay for it.

I suppose that if Wall Street wants $1 trillion to bail themselves out of the mess they made, then maybe middle class Americans deserve something in return for taking ALL the risk in Paulsen's bailout proposal.

Why is it, John, that when Wall Street gets into trouble, the first place they go for help is the government?

Well if you're in the upper middle class, that is like the 3,000,000+ range for McCain correct? I don't see this much being an issue. But the rest of us living in reality where about 60,000 income is average, the question of health care is a significant one and I'd prefer if our president was better connected with America, and not some remote fluff "apple pie" Americana that is used to drudge up emotions.